I would say Amen! I am so grateful (particularly on this Good Friday) for the power of God in my life personally, and in your life as your testimony shows. As an Anabaptist, I believe that the picture is not complete until individual experiences of God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit are united in a communal experience. In the local community of Jesus followers, we serve one another and allow ourselves to be served by others. We join together to serve those others around us near and far and live out our lives together as faithful disciples in imitation of Christ’s self-sacrifice. That’s my vision, or at least part of it.

I hope that you’ve found a wonderful local community with whom to share your powerful experience of God. Have a blessed Easter!

Peace Be With You
Micky

What do you mean by “false”? I guess it is the same question I would ask an inerrantist from the opposite end: “What do you mean ‘without error’?” I am not an inerrantist, I think that one can find what you might call “contradictions” and problems of historicity in Scripture, but I have a hard time saying that any part of our canon can be completely thrown out. For me, even the texts with the most problematic messages must be dealt with in some way, interpreted in their context.

For example, I see an ideal of egalitarianism in Gal 3:28 that was muffled by the cultural expectations of the first century Roman empire. In order to be good witnesses, not stir up too much trouble, Paul (or pseudo-Pauline authors) downplay/restrict the roles of women in the church. This challenges my own knee-jerk counter-culturalism. Perhaps I should ask myself if my revolutionary ideas against the state are just generically “peace and justice” ideas or whether they’re truly gospel-based and whether being “revolutionary” for the sake of revolutionary idealism might actually hinder the ultimate cause of the gospel. I believe that the biblical author was “wrong” that women should not speak in church or have any authority over a man, but I still extract meaning from the text, relevant to my/our life/lives today.

I appreciate the holistic aspect of Anabaptism very much. I especially appreciate this:

“But they were equally certain that man was not saved in spite of himself. God has graciously provided a way of salvation, but in order to benefit from it man must freely choose it for himself. This implied that man could choose, and it was a rejection of the Protestant doctrine of the bondage of the will.”

Amen and Amen!

True that. The problem was their historical context. The Roman Catholics had those pesky indulgences and the like, so Protestants like Luther swung all the way to the “faith” end of the spectrum. The Anabaptists reacted against both. On top of that, they believe that since the state corrupted the church, there should be separation between the two (one of many ways the early Anabaptists were ahead of their time). It was that issue that motivated them to refrain from baptizing their infants, when baptism functioned as a birth certificate, establishing citizenship with the state. So they weren’t just theological rebels, but political rebels as well. So they were hunted down and killed.

With those historical beginnings, one can see why there might be tension with a person like Luther who had no qualms about killing off dissidents. Our contemporary context may include some bitter antagonism about theology and biblical interpretation, but at least we’re not killing each other!

On the non-creedal people issue, you may be interested to check out an issue of Mennonite Life that deals with Anabaptists and creeds. Also, Aaron Weldon was just telling me yesterday about a Mennonite theologian named James Reimer, who wrote Mennonites and Classical Theology: Dogmatic Foundations for Christian Ethics. Reimer apparently argues that Anabaptists should not hesitate to embrace the creeds as their foundation, especially since so many contemporary Mennonites seem to be wrapped up in liberal thought. My understanding is that the early Anabaptists didn’t oppose the creeds per se, they just felt the creeds were incomplete.

This post reminds me of the pleasant days in my historical theology class when I had the honor of reading some of my ancestors writings. As a Baptist, I was never made privy to anything historical past EY Mullins…so when I read Simons and Hubmaier I felt a deep kindred spirit with them.

On this issue of faith and works and the Anabaptist response, the quotes you provided sound much like “official” (a tough word for non-creedal people!) Baptist doctrine. True faith produces works and works highlight the existence and persistence of this faith.

Also, the idea that we are able to choose God and that this possibility is a gift from God sounds quite Methodist (and Baptist)…prevenient grace.

All of this to say that we are all more interrelated than we would sometimes like to admit!

Thanks again Pat!